Thursday, 31 December 2015

There is a Marxist-Leninist organization in turkey called the DHKP/C. The name basically translates into the "People's Front" in english. Mainstream media in both the western "democracies" and in turkey regularly denounce this group as a "terrorist" organization that is totally alienated from the people. Of course this is a lie. I realized this a couple of years ago when I saw pictures of MayDay demonstrations in turkey, where there were many people waving DHKP/C banners and flags. And not just bomb throwing youth, but average citizens. Now, I am not a die hard supporter of this organization, but I appreciate the way they work, and the support they receive from the people. This is a short documentary on how they are fighting gentrification, and how crooked people from speculators to the bloodstained government are all in on pushing the poor people out of their neighbourhoods so assholes can get rich. Lives and communities are being destroyed for profit.Watch this inspirational documentary .

Wednesday, 30 December 2015

I was talking to a person considerably younger than myself yesterday who said that no one should worry about bill c-51 that the kkkanadian government put into place to combat dissent, "if they aren't breaking the law. Other than that, you are a criminal". What a fucking moron. How many people have died waiting for a fucking trial at Guantanamo? Nothing but silence. He thinks he's a "protester", but fucking sounds like fucking harper. Pull your head out your ass. And as far as kkkanada's biggest ally is concerned, they are the biggest force for death and destruction that the world has EVER seen.

Why America Is Not—AND CANNOT BE—a Force for Good in the World

December 28, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

In one of those statements of his that goes against what almost everyone thinks, Bob Avakian asserts:

The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.

—BAsics 1:3

Is that true? And if so, what are the implications for whether “America” (U.S. capitalism-imperialism) could ever be a force for good in the world?

As one case study of the imperialism the U.S. spreads—and can only spread—around the world, let’s look at the example of the Gates Foundation’s Coffee Initiative in Ethiopia, an impoverished country in the Horn of Africa. Bill and Melinda Gates write that they started initiatives like this because they were horrified by the widespread death and disease they saw when they first visited Africa. They felt this suffering was “unnecessary” and could be ended by enlightened philanthropy.
Today, the multi-billionaire Bill Gates points to the kind of investing and structural reforms his foundation finances around the world as a model for governments and fellow billionaire philanthropic capitalists. An article on his foundation’s website, “How Good Coffee Becomes Good Business for African Farmers,” talks about how floating loans to Ethiopian farmers has “helped thousands of East Africa’s smallholder farmers” gain “access to technical knowledge, professional processing and milling services, reliable markets [and] working capital.” And to top it off, these farmers provide a reliable source of high-quality coffee for U.S. consumers.
Gates argues that the enormous crises facing humanity—such as poverty and climate change—can and must be taken on by extensive government regulation and massive philanthropic efforts like his own.
And to take that a step forward, it could be—and often is—argued that the U.S. should use its great wealth to meet human needs by investing in projects that provide a living wage and improve the lot of the poor, and stop pouring $600 billion into the military—over half the discretionary budget of the United States this year.
Let’s dissect the Gates Foundation’s work in Ethiopia, and then draw back the lens to see what this reveals about the nature of capitalist-imperialist investment.

Where Does the Gates Foundation’s Money Come From?

But how do philanthropic efforts like the Gates Foundation’s Coffee Initiative, to take but one example, actually work?
The first thing Gates omits from his promotional materials is that the funding for his foundation’s investments must be generated from profitable investments. To continue to generate money to fund its charity or less-profitable projects, the Gates Foundation needs to see a return of something like five percent profit on its investments. You don’t get that kind of return investing in small coffee farms in Ethiopia.
The Gates Foundation “invested $423 million in the oil companies whose [Nigeria] delta pollution literally kills the children the foundation tries to help. It had vast holdings in Big Pharma firms that priced AIDS drugs out of reach for desperate victims the foundation wanted to save. It benefited greatly from predatory lenders whose practices sparked the Great Recession and chocolate makers said by the US government to have supported child slavery in Ivory Coast.” The foundation “holds more than $1.2 billion in a rogues’ gallery of corporate actors, including BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil, whose environmental despoliation promotes climate change.” ("How the Gates Foundation’s Investments Are Undermining Its Own Good Works: Its vast holdings in the fossil fuel and arms industries subvert the foundation’s battle against disease and poverty,” by Charles Piller, The Nation, August 22, 2014)
If you were to confront Gates, he would probably readily respond—accurately—that if his foundation didn’t invest in these enslaving, exploiting, environment destroying projects, there wouldn’t be profit to fund charity work. That even if he didn’t invest in them, someone else would.

Not only did slavery play a major role in the historical development of the U.S., but the wealth and power of the U.S. rests today on a worldwide system of imperialist exploitation that ensnares hundreds of millions, and ultimately billions, of people in conditions hardly better than those of slaves. Now, if this seems like an extreme or extravagant claim, think about the tens of millions of children throughout the Third World who, from a very, very early age, are working nearly every day of the year—as the slaves on the southern plantations in the United States used to say, "from can't see in the morning, till can't see at night"—until they've been physically used up....These are conditions very similar to outright slavery....This includes overt sexual harassment of women, and many other degradations as well. All this is the foundation on which the imperialist system rests, with U.S. imperialism now sitting atop it all.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:4

Those are the rules of the game.

What the U.S. Brings to the World: Capitalism-Imperialism

Whatever Gates’ intentions, the changes brought by the projects his foundation (or the U.S. government) undertakes that are not for profit are far outweighed and undercut by the overall and horrific operation of the capitalist-imperialist system. (And such charity projects are objectively part of maintaining the legitimacy of that overall system.)
Second, even if these projects are motivated by a desire to reduce global poverty, they proceed through the system of capitalism-imperialism and reinforce its economic, political, and social relations. This is what the foundation means by giving small farmers greater access to “technical knowledge, professional processing and milling services, reliable markets [and] working capital.” So they actually end up intensifying global poverty, inequality, and the domination of a handful of imperialist powers like the U.S.

Imperialism means huge monopolies and financial institutions controlling the economies and the political systems—and the lives of people—not just in one country but all over the world. Imperialism means parasitic exploiters who oppress hundreds of millions of people and condemn them to untold misery; parasitic financiers who can cause millions to starve just by pressing a computer key and thereby shifting vast amounts of wealth from one place to another. Imperialism means war—war to put down the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed, and war between rival imperialist states—it means the leaders of these states can condemn humanity to unbelievable devastation, perhaps even total annihilation, with the push of a button.
Imperialism is capitalism at the stage where its basic contradictions have been raised to tremendously explosive levels. But imperialism also means that there will be revolution—the oppressed rising up to overthrow their exploiters and tormentors—and that this revolution will be a worldwide struggle to sweep away the global monster, imperialism.

—BAsics 1:6

The Gates’ Coffee Initiative is one example. It has not ended, but in many ways worsened hunger in Ethiopia. Right now, 8.2 million Ethiopians teeter on the verge of hunger, even starvation, without reliable access to enough healthy, affordable food. The immediate cause is a severe drought (worsened by imperialism’s devastating impact on the global climate), but also capitalism’s domination of global food production. Investment in coffee pushes more farmers to grow crops for export to wealthy countries, not affordable food for Ethiopians, even as millions go hungry. And it leaves Ethiopia increasingly dependent on imported food and at the mercy of the ups, downs, and crises of global capitalism.
Investment in modern coffee growing for export also warps and twists the development of infrastructure in a country like Ethiopia. Financing, transport, and communication are developed to invest in, produce, and ship coffee for export while food grown in one part of Ethiopia is inaccessible to starving people in other parts of the country. (See “Ethiopia’s agriculture boom yields a bare harvest for poor as El Niño bites: Ethiopia may be portrayed as an emerging African powerhouse, but prolonged drought has left 8.2 million people facing a major food security crisis,” Guardian, October 26, 2015).

The anarchic workings of capitalism mean that projects like the Coffee Initiative also generate inequality and deeper class divisions. Of Ethiopia’s 80 million people living on and dependent on small farms—some 30 million live in abject poverty. The Coffee Initiative is impacting a tiny sliver of them—perhaps 90,000 of the 15 million Ethiopians who work in the coffee industry. The farmers getting such assistance and access to the world market will have a competitive advantage over other small farmers. So even if they’ve started out on a more or less equally, capitalist competition means the gulf between them and those without assistance and access will grow and many farmers will be driven under.

Structures That Enforce Capitalism-Imperialism

To stick with our case study of the Gates Foundation investment in Ethiopian coffee farmers, what does it mean that what the U.S. brings to the world are structures that enforce capitalism-imperialism?
As we’ve seen, capitalist-imperialist development projects—whether non-profit or for profit—bring massive inequality and misery, which generate mass suffering, anger, and often opposition. So how is this economic setup maintained? By political structures that enforce that imperialism—both by forcing through economic projects and by suppressing the population overall.
Take the Ethiopian state, which is backed by the U.S. Right now it is threatening to forcibly evict thousands of farmers and tribal peoples from their lands to make way for imperialist-sponsored projects, including sugar plantations. The regime has implemented “economic reforms” to facilitate global investment in commodity markets while violently suppressing opposition to the intolerable, imperialist-dominated status quo. Just this year, human rights groups report that the Ethiopian government has persecuted journalists, bloggers, and other opponents, detained and tortured protesters, and continues to oppress minority peoples. And the Gates Coffee Initiative is objectively part of maintaining that oppressive structure by building up a base of support within Ethiopia for an imperialist-oriented economy and state.

An Empire to Enforce a WORLD of Exploitation

What’s illustrated by the example of Ethiopia is also true globally. The kinds of grotesque inequality and severe poverty, the social upheaval and crises provoked by the anarchy of capital in endless competition for higher profit require violent enforcement. So when a bank tells rural farmers or urban slum dwellers that they have to move on, there are death squads and police and troops to enforce that. This is one reason why the U.S. backs ruthless tyrants all over the world.
Structures to enforce imperialism include violent repression of resistance and rebellion of the oppressed. But imperialism also means conflict and war between rival reactionary powers, invasions, backing brutal tyrants, staging coups, and carrying out war crimes through proxy armies. In countries like Ethiopia, key regions like the Middle East, and on a global scale, U.S. domination is under constant challenge from major capitalist rivals, regional powers, and reactionary “rogue players” like ISIS—all of whom are driven by the system’s rules and compulsions.
Take Ethiopia. It’s a populous and relatively stable state in the Horn of Africa—a strategic and highly volatile area, which includes failed states, ISIS strongholds, allies of Iran, and is a target of big power rivalry. So the U.S. has built up a relationship with the Ethiopian regime and military to help enforce U.S. political and military interests in the region, including in contending with rival powers and, particularly today, with reactionary forces that threaten the operation of global capitalism-imperialism and the U.S. role within that. Ethiopian military and intelligence collaboration is a key part of the “war on terror” and attempting to maintain U.S. power in the Middle East and North Africa.
So spreading capitalism-imperialism and the structures that enforce it are why the U.S. invests so massively in drones, bombs, spy technology, nukes, and troops. This is why the U.S. spends more on its military than China, Russia, France, the UK, Germany, Japan, and India combined. It’s not because some “military-industrial complex” outside the workings and needs of the U.S. empire has corrupted the U.S. political system. That vast military enforces a world of exploitation, and the role of the U.S. as top dog within that.

To Change the World, You Have to Uproot the Problem

These are the system’s laws that no one can escape, and regardless of whether some people do a little better, this system can never liberate people en masse. This is why the U.S. is incapable of doing “good” in the world, even when it tries.
The example we explored here is a microcosm of how capitalism-imperialism has to operate within a set of rules that rule out the interests of humanity, regardless of the intent of the capitalists themselves.
Uprooting exploitation and oppression requires overthrowing imperialism, and the political structures that enforce that.
And that requires an actual revolution.
Because of the work that BA has done—summing up the experience of the first wave of communist revolutions and further developing the scientific method of understanding and transforming the world—there is a REAL way to get to a whole different world—one in which the terrible lop-sidedness between the vast majority of countries like Ethiopia and the handful of imperialist powers is eliminated and in which this whole process is one which proceeds through narrowing and overcoming, rather than exacerbating the gaps and disparities between different peoples and among the people themselves. THAT is beyond the scope of this article—but anyone who truly wants to overcome this horrific and life-stealing lopsidedness needs to check this out.

Tuesday, 29 December 2015

Of course the fucking system refuses to indict the rabid dogs who keep all of this murderous bullshit in order. A 12 year old playing with a toy gun in a playground shot dead within 2 minutes of the pigs showing up. This system is of no use to the people. It must end.Read about the Tamir Rice case, and how the pig system tries to cover their shit up.

EXPOSED! The Prosecutor’s “Expert Reports”

A Blatant Attempt to Whitewash the Police Murder of Tamir Rice

Updated November 15, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Update: Since this article was written, the prosecutor has released yet another so-called “expert” report declaring the police murder of Tamir Rice as “reasonable”—just like the first two reports, the author of the third report is neither “neutral” nor “expert” but someone deeply involved in law enforcement who has been brought in to help whitewash Tamir’s murder. In another despicable move, the prosecutor accused the Rice family of being “economically motivated” in their efforts to bring to trial the cops who killed Tamir.

Here are the uncontested facts:

Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old playing in a park who was gunned down by police in Cleveland, Ohio on November 22, 2014.

On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was playing with a toy gun, by himself, in an empty park near his home. Someone called in a 911 report on seeing Tamir in the park, stating that he was probably a juvenile and the gun was probably a toy.

Acting on this report, two Cleveland cops, Officers Loehmann and Garmback, drove their squad car to a few feet away from Tamir, who at that point had the toy in his waistband.Within 1.7 seconds of their arrival, before the car had even come to a full stop, Loehmann jumped from the car and shot Tamir twice; the shots were fatal.

As Tamir lay bleeding on the sidewalk, the cops failed to administer first aid or even comfort. When Tamir’s sister ran towards him to help, the cops tackled and handcuffed her and put her in their squad car, just a few feet away from where her brother lay dying.

Immediately the police put out the typical story when cops kills someone—of Tamir supposedly threatening them with what they believed was a gun, refusing their repeated requests to put it down until finally they had “no choice” but to shoot him. But then it turned out there was video footage of the killing that exposed the police story as total lies.

This came at the height of protests across the U.S. against police getting away with murder of Black and Brown people. The footage from the video was so damning that it seemed that no onecould deny that at least this was a clear case of police murdering an unarmed, unthreatening, and defenseless child—that this time, the system would just have to indict, try, and convict the cops for cold-blooded murder. Even the judge who reviewed the video (and ruled in June that there was “probable cause” to charge the police with homicide) said: “The video in question is notorious and hard to watch. After viewing it several times, this court is still thunderstruck by how quickly this event turned deadly.”

But flash forward to today, almost one year since the shooting—there have been NO CHARGES OR INDICTMENTS brought against either of these murderers. And in a clear indication of intent to completely whitewash this crime, in early October the Cuyahoga County prosecutor released two “expert reports” to the media, both of which claimed that the police killing of Tamir Rice was “reasonable,” and denounced criticism of the killing as “Monday-morning quarterbacking,” strongly implying that there should be no criticism of police killings, ever.

The mainstream media treated these reports as the considered opinions of neutral experts who had carefully and honestly examined the facts—the message was that “perhaps this shooting too was ‘more complicated’ than people thought.” As such, these reports, and the media coverage of them, are clearly setting the stage for the grand jury hearing this case to return no indictments.

Rice Family’s Attorneys Expose the Experts and Their Reports

Now three attorneys working for the Rice family have written a scathing letter to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor that carefully and cuttingly reveals that these prosecution “experts” are not neutral and not expert, and that their reports blatantly ignore the facts in an extremely convoluted effort to get around what millions of people saw happen with their own eyes. (A PDF of the lawyers’ letter is available online.)

Here are some of the key things that the attorneys’ letter brings out (all quotes that follow are from the attorneys’ letter):

These “experts” are in reality neither “neutral” nor “expert:”

One of them, Lamar Sims, was hired by the prosecutor to do a supposedly objective investigation “two months after he gave a television interview on Denver public access television... in whichhe [Sims] expressed pro-police opinions about the shooting of a young child playing with a toy gun, a clear reference to the shooting of Tamir Rice. Sims also participated in an event centered on the police’s use of force in March 2015 hosted by your office, where he expressed pro-police sentiments.” [Emphasis added]

The other “expert,” Kimberly Crawford, was hired “even though she has been discredited as an expert in this field after the U.S. Department of Justice rejected her opinion in the high profile 1992 fatal Ruby Ridge shootings on the grounds that her legal analysis was flawed, distorted the applicable case law, and improperly quoted cases selectively in an effort to exonerate the police in their use of deadly force.” [Emphasis added]

In other words, the prosecutor’s office went looking for, and hired, investigators that it already knew would issue reports exonerating the cops.

It is virtually unprecedented for a prosecutor to introduce pro-defense “expert reports:”

At this stage of the judicial process, the prosecutor has the job of presenting the argument for bringing criminal indictments, based on the known facts of the case. (As noted before, a judge has already ruled that there is probable cause for charges to be brought.) Once charges are brought, defense attorneys can bring in experts at the trial who will back up the defense theory. But in this case, the prosecutor is playing the role of the defense attorney for the cops who murdered Tamir, hiring experts to justify not bringing the case to trial at all.

The reports rely on “evidence” that has already been proven false by the video:

“Sims goes so far as to say that the statement Loehmann allegedly made to the FBI agent that he gave commands to Tamir before shooting is of ‘particular import’—even though that statement is plainly hearsay and demonstrably false, as the video makes it clear that there was no time for Loehmann to issue any commands.” The Rice family attorneys go on to note that Crawford “repeatedly claims that the video shows Tamir ‘reaches toward his right side waist and lifts his jacket,’ even though Sims acknowledges that ‘the video is grainy and it is unclear—from the video—whether Rice reaches for his gun.’” (We would add that no honest person watching the video can “see” Tamir reaching for the toy gun.)

The reports disregard the fact that the cops were caught plainly lying and cannot be considered as credible witnesses:

“The reports fail to explore the credibility issues surrounding police claims that the officers warned Tamir three times immediately before shooting, when the 1.7-second time frame makes it apparent that did not happen. The ‘experts’ made no attempt to trace back those demonstrably false claims to the officers themselves—the natural source—which would undercut the officers’ credibility.”

The reports make a big deal of saying the officers didn’t know that Tamir was a child and the gun was a toy—while ignoring the fact that they killed Tamir before they could possibly have determined the circumstances:

“...given the undisputed fact ... that Loehmann shot Tamir within 1.7 seconds of arriving at the scene, no reasonable officer would have had time to make any assessment at all about Tamir’s age or toy (which he was not even holding when Loehmann shot him). ... according to these so-called ‘experts,’ it is reasonable for police officers to drive into a park ... and immediately open fire on any African American boy they encounter there.”

****

There is much more in the attorneys’ letter, including examples of blatantly ignoring established case law about when police shootings are legally justified, and we encourage our readers to read the entire document. But there is more than enough even in the excerpts cited here to show these so-called “expert reports” for what they really are: part of a cold-blooded move by the authorities to exonerate the blatant, vicious, and completely UN-reasonable murder of Tamir Rice—and in doing so, to justify and unleash further levels of police terror and murder.

Sunday, 27 December 2015

No matter what time of year it is, the u.s. killing machine goes on, doing their best to to steal from the world, and if they don't like it, they will be killed and possibly tortured before....

Navy SEALs in Afghanistan: War Crimes by U.S. “Heroes”

December 21, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This past week, the New York Times published details of deadly atrocities that were committed by members of the U.S. Navy SEAL Team 2 in Afghanistan in 2012. The Times also reported how Navy commanders conspired to cover up the crimes and dismiss the accusations against the SEALs. The Navy SEALs are an elite “special operations unit” with the explicit mission to carry out covert assassinations of “America’s enemies.”

What happened was this: a bomb exploded at a local Afghan police station in the village of Kalach, killing one policeman. Afghan police then rounded up alleged “suspects” at the local marketplace. They arrested three out-of-town junk merchants, beat them severely, then marched them to the nearby U.S. base and handed them over to the SEAL team.

According to testimony from U.S. Army enlisted men at the base, three SEALs proceeded to torture the Afghan prisoners. They dropped heavy rocks on the men’s groins and chests, stood with their boots on the men’s heads, knee-bashed them in the stomach, fired handguns next to their ears, and inflicted a form of waterboarding. One of the men in custody later died from his mistreatment.

Afterwards, the Army soldiers reported the abuse, but in the course of a Navy investigation, the soldiers were put under pressure to change their report, and their motives were attacked.

Eventually, in an internal U.S. Navy “Captain’s Mast,” which is the least serious form of Navy disciplinary procedure, even a reprimand for failing to report an incident was dismissed. Two of the SEALs involved have since been promoted.

The Times also reported that the SEALs at this base had continually abused Afghans that they had contact with: “According to the soldiers and Afghan villagers, they had amused themselves by tossing grenades over the walls of their base, firing high-caliber weapons at passing vehicles and even aiming slingshots at children, striking them in the face with hard candy.”

Mullah Muhammadzai, a village elder, said that he and other elders were afraid to be called to meetings at the U.S. base because they often were beaten there and they never knew if they would emerge alive.

These atrocities shed light on the real nature of the U.S. Navy SEALs, who have been raised to the level of pop culture icons and great “heroes” of the nation on the level of the fictional Marvel Comics Avengers. They are portrayed as being able to do no wrong, bringing glory to the USA—from the sensationalized accounts of their assassination of Osama bin Laden to their immortalization in the video game “Call of Duty.” This in a country where genocide—the near wiping out of the indigenous populations of North America—had long ago been turned into a child’s game of “cowboys and Indians.”

The war crimes carried out by the SEALs are part of the enormous devastation, death, and destruction that U.S. has caused in Afghanistan. From the very start, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was carried out with terrible brutality and vengeful murder. Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued the guidelines for the U.S. response: “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” Through 2014, the number of people killed in Afghanistan due to the war is estimated on the lowend to be nearly 400,000. According to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, over a quarter-million Afghans are living as refugees outside the country and there are nearly a million internally displaced people, all lives that have been torn apart by the U.S. war and occupation.

Thursday, 24 December 2015

Ah, thank god that "we" can export our version of freedom and democracy to others, and in fact force it down their heathen throats. Especially in this, the most forgiving and kind time of year.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- One person was killed after an argument erupted at a crowded shopping mall in North Carolina on the afternoon before Christmas, police said Thursday.
Detectives from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department are investigating what the department called "an officer involved shooting" inside the Northlake Mall in Charlotte.
Police said in a statement that off-duty officers who were working at the mall arrived at the scene after the fight broke out. One "armed" person was shot and pronounced dead at the scene.

Photos

Authorities respond to the scene of a shooting at the Northlake Mall in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, Dec. 24, 2015. (AP Photo/Steve Reed)

No officers were injured.
The police statement said that the situation was not considered "an active shooter situation," an indication that no armed suspects were on the loose. An investigation is ongoing.
Jeff Keith, deputy director with Mecklenburg EMS, said the mall was closed but people were still hiding in stores and were trying to get out. Police said that family members should go to the AMC parking lot to look for relatives.
John Dawson, a salesman who lives in Charlotte, said he was at the mall buying a gift for his date when the shooting erupted. He said it began with an argument inside a store, which he said was packed with customers.
"There was a dude fighting with one or two dudes, and I kind of stopped and looked over there," Dawson said. One person pulled out a gun and started "shooting everywhere."
He said other shoppers began running when the shots were fired. He said a police officer was nearby and returned the fire.
Dawson said the suspect appeared to have been hit twice by the police officer. He said he backed up against a wall and watched as people fled the scene.
Don Willis, who works as a valet at the mall, said he heard gunshots, then saw a wave of people exiting the mall.
"It was wild. I heard the first shot and I thought, 'Wait. What was that?' And kind of like started turning around and walking and saw this huge line of people -- wave of people coming -- and I thought a bomb was about to go off, and I just took off," he said.

This is exactly what I was saying with the song "Garden City". Victoria is certainly a drug infested little shithole, but I still love it here. Things were not like this when I was a kid, which is when I start sounding like a cranky old man.....

Police and ambulance officials at Johnson Street parkade, where the body of a man was found on Dec. 20, 2015. Photograph By CHEK News

The B.C. Coroners Service is investigating three potential drug overdose deaths in Greater Victoria over two days.
“Three in 48 hours is concerning. It’s higher than normal for this region,” coroner Barb McLintock said Tuesday.
“On the Lower Mainland, it would be, ‘Here we go again.’ But for this region, three in 48 hours is a lot, particularly when we’ve heard from our community partners, like the police and public health, that there have also been some non-fatal overdoses.”
In addition to the three deaths, police responded to 20 non-fatal drug overdoses on Sunday and Monday.
Victoria police received a 911 call on Sunday afternoon about three people possibly overdosing in the Johnson Street parkade. When officers arrived, they found a man in his mid-30s dead. Two others were taken to hospital.
On Monday morning, Victoria police received a call asking them to do a wellness check on a man in his mid-60s, living in an apartment in James Bay. The man had missed a couple of appointments, which was unusual, McLintock said. Police went to the apartment just before 10 a.m. and found him dead.
“There were signs at the scene this could be related to drug use,” McLintock said.
About 4 a.m. Tuesday, Saanich police were called to a house in the 300-block of Ker Avenue. They found a man in his 50s dead inside the home, said Sgt. Steve Eassie.
“It appears to be a drug overdose,” Eassie said. “We can’t say it’s definitely related to the other incidents, but it looks as though there may be complications related to drug use. It looks like there were multiple types of drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, and a reference to huffing as well.”
Huffing refers to people intentionally inhaling chemicals found in household products such as aerosol sprays to get high.
The coroners service has sent blood samples from all three deceased to be analyzed at the Provincial Toxicology Centre in Vancouver, McLintock said.
She hopes to get the toxicology results from the first death today and from the second and third deaths by the end of the week.
“There’s no suggestion these were naive drug users,” McLintock said. “These were people who were relatively experienced on the drug scene.”
Police and public health authorities are concerned a batch of illicit street drugs has been cut with fentanyl, a powerful drug 50 times more potent than heroin and extremely toxic.
Fentanyl-associated overdoses have increased throughout the province over the past year. The drug is an emerging public health concern, according to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
In 2014, there were 360 drug-overdose deaths in B.C., many of them related to multiple drugs and alcohol. In 2012, fentanyl was detected in five per cent of overdose deaths. It has now increased to 35 per cent of those deaths.
Until the coroners service gets the toxicology results, McLintock is warning people not to take illicit drugs when they are alone.
“Could this just be that it’s party-from-hell week because it’s the week before Christmas? It could be. There’s just a lot more Christmas parties. Or it may be that there’s some unfortunate contamination or extra strong drugs,” she said.ldickson@timescolonist.com

- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/3-potential-drug-deaths-in-2-days-hit-victoria-area-1.2139040#sthash.hptBAA9g.dpuf

30-year-old suffered non-life-threatening injuries after being struck twice by machete

Police inspect the scene of Wednesday afternoon's attack at Bay and Dundas streets, near the Eaton Centre. (CBC)

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A man has been charged with attempted murder following what police call an unprovoked attack on another man near Toronto's Eaton Centre Wednesday afternoon.
Arlington Thompson, 35, also faces charges of aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and possession of a weapon. Police say the man had a 30-centimetre machete, which he allegedly used in the attack. Police say the man also had a 20-centimetre hunting knife. Police now have both weapons.
The attack left a 30-year-old man with several injuries. Police say he is in stable condition in hospital.
Toronto Police Sgt. Gale Corra said the two men had no previous contact and no history with each other.
"They may have just been crossing each other on the street," said Corra.
Police say they were called at 4:37 p.m. ET about the incident, which happened near Bay and Dundas streets.
A witness, Terence Yip, who works in technological support and maintenance for CBC, told CBC News that he was heading south on Bay Street when he heard yelling. He said one man was swinging at a man who was holding a guitar. Yip said a woman was yelling for police. He said a lot of people were in the area at the time.

Clothing is left strewn on the ground after a man wielding a machete was tackled by security guards near Toronto's Eaton Centre. (CBC)

Yip also tweeted that the attacker, a black man, yelled "F--k white people" before allegedly attacking the victim, who is white. He said the alleged attacker's machete was "probably the length of my arm. It was pretty big, a substantial weapon."
Yip said the man being attacked was on his back defending himself with his legs, while the man with the machete was swinging the knife at the man's legs.
"I've never seen anyone openly attack someone like that," said Yip. "It was extremely aggressive to the point where it was obvious that it was an attack."
Yip said a bystander tried to break up the fight, intervening long enough to allow the victim to run inside a nearby building.
The man with the machete had his back to the door at the Atrium mall on Bay Street and did not try to attack anyone else. Yip said the man was walking in a kind of circle outside the doors of the building before security guards nearby tackled him from behind, "like a football tackle."

Security guard praised

Terence Yip, who witnessed the attack, told CBC that the attack was 'extremely aggressive.' (CBC)

The security guard who tackled the man with the machete has been with his company for several years. His company says they are extremely happy with how he and the other officer reacted to the situation.
"It was executed perfectly," said Michael Soberal, manager of security, safety and sustainability for H&R REIT, said of his employee's tackling of the man.
He said his officers are trained to deal with a variety of situations. He said they both assessed the situation, took the risk and reacted.
"It's one of the busiest intersections, of course, in Canada and it takes a unique type of officer to be able to work down here," said Soberal

Wednesday, 23 December 2015

There are many people in both the u.s. and kkkanada who believe in the myth of these countries having "lost their way", either under george dubya in the states, or under harper here. kkkanadians in particular, seem to be in absolute denial of their imperialist history, from the founding of the country, until the kkkanadian government's current role in helping to decimate various countries in the Middle East in order to get a share of the theft from those lands. This is an excellent article about confronting some of those truths that many people try to hide from.

An open letter to the signatories of the NY Times ad "Is This America?"

YES, This IS the United States of America—We Need to Move Beyond That in the Interests of Humanity

December 21, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On December 10, a full-page ad appeared in the New York Times under the headline, “IS THIS AMERICA?” with a large image of an American flag at half-mast in the background. The ad calls out:

A DANGEROUS TIDE OF HATRED, VIOLENCE, AND SUSPICION IS RISING IN AMERICA—WHETHER AIMED AT ARAB AND MUSLIM AMERICANS, WOMEN AND THE PLACES WE SEEK HEALTH CARE, BLACK PEOPLE, IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES, OR PEOPLE JUST GOING ABOUT THEIR DAILY LIVES (see the ad here).

Much of what is in the ad are good sentiments and a lot of what motivates the signers is positive. But this message comes wrapped—graphically and ideologically—in “America” and the American flag, a package that is not only not good but will lead you away from actually overcoming these forms of hatred and violence.

After all, what is “America” (the United States)?

This country and the “American way of life” are built on land stolen through genocide and on the backs of slaves kidnapped from Africa. It survives off vicious exploitation. It is enforced with a massive army that wreaks havoc and mayhem in places that you’ve heard about and places you probably haven’t.

In BAsics, Bob Avakian speaks to what this country is built on:

Now, of course, slavery was not the only factor that played a significant part in the emergence of the U.S. as a world power, whose economic strength underlies its massive military force. A major historical factor in all this was the theft of land, on a massive scale, from Mexico as well as from native peoples. But, in turn, much of that conquest of land was, for a long period of time up until the Civil War, largely to expand the slave system. “Remember the Alamo,” we are always reminded. Well, many of the “heroes” of the Alamo were slave traders and slave chasers....And expanding the slave system was a major aim of the overall war with Mexico, although that war also led to the westward expansion of the developing capitalist system centered in the northern United States. (BAsics 1:2)

The rulers of this country run a society in which terrible and dehumanizing violence has been the rule against Black and other people of color and women—since the founding, right up to today, changing only in its form, not its essence. And their “domestic tranquility” is enforced by the most massive, militarized police forces in the world and a prison system the likes of which history has never seen. Its heroes are genocidal Indian killers, slave owners, and war criminals. Is it any wonder that baked deep into the psyche of “the American people” are ideas and values that reflect that privilege and parasitism and that this repeatedly assumes violent forms?

The appeal of the ruling class to people to identify with them and their interests as “Americans” is based on lies about what the United States brings to the world. They say they bring democracy and freedom to the world but they bring sweatshops, slums, drones, and brutal regimes that enforce the whole setup.

If you can conceive of a world without America—without everything America stands for and everything it does in the world—then you've already taken great strides and begun to get at least a glimpse of a whole new world. If you can envision a world without any imperialism, exploitation, oppression—and the whole philosophy that rationalizes it—a world without division into classes or even different nations, and all the narrow-minded, selfish, outmoded ideas that uphold this; if you can envision all this, then you have the basis for proletarian internationalism. And once you have raised your sights to all this, how could you not feel compelled to take an active part in the world historic struggle to realize it; why would you want to lower your sights to anything less?

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:31

And the appeal to identify with “America” is also based on the bribes and privileges doled out to sections of people in this country—a higher standard of living, and the right to post complaints on Facebook or for some sections of society to hold legal protests... sometimes. Even as all that is under assault, the idea that Americans are entitled to the perks that come from living in a country that sits at the top of a world of exploitation permeates large sections of society. But what’s so “exceptional” about all that? Nothing—at least nothing good! And what’s so great about living in a dog-eat-dog society of savage inequalities, where everything and everyone is measured as a commodity? It is both true and an essential moral stand to say American lives are not more important than other people’s lives.

Today it is definitely true that ugly, violent intolerance is being orchestrated by the rulers of the U.S. They do that as they confront challenges from reactionary rivals and forces around the world, and profound social contradictions, conflicts, and potential conflicts in their “homeland.” And they do it with the most disgusting appeals to patriotism. But why should anyone with a sense of what this country does to people here and around the world, and who can tell right from wrong, identify with “America” in any way, shape or form?

If you really DO want to see real change, don’t be getting into the Democratic Party, which basically sponsored this ad through its arm MOVEON, and which right down to today has carried out its “share” and more of the “hatred, violence, and suspicion” deplored by the ad. Their candidates, including both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, will tell you they stand for "USA Number One." The rulers of this country and all their politicians and propaganda machinery spread the lie that this country’s wars of empire are about “keeping Americans safe.” And they say nothing about, and cover up, how the United States terrorizes much of the planet with bombs, drones, and torturers.

Here’s a sobering truth:

If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are. (BAsics 3:12)

The way out of this madness is a revolution that will bring into being a whole different kind of state, one that will renounce—on day one—wars of empire; one that will bring into being a society where people learn to identify as citizens of the world instead of aspiring to lord it over the world.Where immediate steps will be taken to end the oppression of people who have been persecuted under this system—starting with an immediate end to terror and murder by police. This will be a society where immigrants will be welcomed as human beings and women will have a right, and as a priority greatly increased access, to safe legal abortion and birth control. And most of all, it will be about getting to a world free of exploitation and oppression of any kind.

There’s a basis for this revolution in the world today. But making an actual revolution, and having a revolution worth making in a country like the United States, is an extremely difficult challenge. It takes leadership with courage, determination, and science. That’s why it is so crucial that we have the leadership of Bob Avakian, and the Party he leads, the Revolutionary Communist Party. As we say at our website: “Because of Bob Avakian and the work he has done over several decades, summing up the positive and negative experience of the communist revolution so far, and drawing from a broad range of human experience, there is a new synthesis of communism that has been brought forward—there really is a viable vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world, and there is the crucial leadership that is needed to carry forward the struggle toward that goal.”

Everyone with a conscience does need to stand up to the ugly, dangerous tide of hatred, violence, and suspicion that is rising in this country. And continue to dig into why America REQUIRES intolerance and hatred for its functioning—and confront honestly what must really be done to root this out. And as a basic starting point: Stop thinking like Americans and start thinking about humanity!

Sunday, 20 December 2015

Look no further than this, if you want to know what this system and it's leaders think about what "democracy" means to them.....

Job Requirement for President of the United States: Being Ready To “Kill Thousands of Innocent Children”

December 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Midway through the 5th Republican Presidential Primary Debate, Hugh Hewitt, one of the “moderators” asked a question that as much as anything defined what this election is all about:

“We’re talking about ruthless things tonight—carpet bombing, toughness, war. And people wonder, could you do that? Could you order air strikes that would kill innocent children by not the scores, but the hundreds and the thousands?Could you wage war as a commander-in-chief?”

No candidate on that stage objected to the question or the premise behind it. There was some booing in the audience from Republicans who seem to have misinterpreted the question, and thought Hewitt was opposed to killing “innocent children not by the scores, but the hundreds and thousands.” But Hewitt made clear in post-interview talk shows that he meant that anyone who is going to be president of the United States needed that level of “lethality.” And that he asked this of Ben Carson, because he wanted to know if Carson was too “soft” to be president, or whether he was willing to do this.

This is a system where the willingness to massacre thousands of innocent children is a job requirement to be president. It is a system of war criminals and mass murdering baby killers. Always has been, still is, and will be until it is there is an actual revolution.

Wednesday, 16 December 2015

Trudeau says they are going to build a road so that the Indigenous people from the territory mentioned in this following story will finally have access to clean water after having a boil water advisory for the past 18 fucking years?!!!! Where the fuck have all of these asshole politicians been until now? Have they all be unaware of this? It's not fucking possible. Now the new prime minister can make a show of how fucking benevolent his pathetic government is. Fucking useless, all of them.

NATIONAL

Isolated reserve without clean water to get all-weather road: Minister

Canada’s new indigenous affairs minister says an isolated reserve under one of the country’s longest boil-water advisories will get a much-needed lifeline to the rest of the country.

Carolyn Bennett says the federal government is committed to seeing an all-weather road built to connect the Shoal Lake 40 First Nation to the mainland. The reserve on the Manitoba-Ontario boundary was cut off a century ago during construction of an aqueduct which carries fresh water to Winnipeg.

Surveyors said at the time that the land was largely uninhabited “with the exception of a few Indians.”

While clean water continues to flow to the Manitoba capital, the reserve of several hundred people has been under a boil-water advisory for 18 years.

The Liberal government is committed to ending that injustice, Bennett said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“This is a serious commitment and it will happen,” she said.

“So many of these issues are no longer indigenous issues. These are Canadian issues about our values and principles and how we can go forward in a good way.”

A formal announcement is coming “in the near future,” she said.

In the summer, the First Nation depends on an aging ferry to get to the mainland, but the vessel failed government inspection this year. Residents use a treacherous ice road in the winter and people have died falling through the ice.

Health-care workers and ambulances won’t risk going to the community and children have to leave the reserve to continue their education past Grade 8. A water treatment plant is prohibitively expensive without a road to transport construction equipment.

Residents have long talked about the need for a “Freedom Road,” which would be both a symbolic and concrete beginning to right the wrong done a century ago.

The former Conservative government refused to commit to help fund construction of a road, despite commitments from the province of Manitoba and the City of Winnipeg to split the cost three ways.

Bennett suggested the road is an important part of reconciliation.

“These are examples of the kinds of steps you have to take to right the wrongs.”

A design study — paid for by the federal, provincial and municipal governments — is expected to be completed in January. The reserve is hoping to begin construction shortly thereafter.

The road is expected to cost around $30 million. The Manitoba government has already introduced a bill in the legislature that would give it legal authority to help fund construction of a permanent road.

Premier Greg Selinger called the road a “key infrastructure project.”

“We’ve been talking about it for a long time,” he told a luncheon Tuesday held by the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, which has been pushing for the road’s construction.